Reading Francis

We who live in the 21st century risk living the life of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, says Pope Francis in his new encyclical. At the societal level, we’re missing a heart.

I started this blog to give me a place to write about things that Pope Francis was saying and doing, for the benefit of those who don’t normally pay attention to popes but were intrigued by this one. (Thus the name ReadingFrancis.) So let me say a few things about the new encyclical he released last week, Dilexit nos (“He loved us.”)*

Popes do and say a lot of things, but encyclicals are basically the most prestigious document they can issue. What they say in an encyclical isn’t necessarily infallible, but it has the most authority in setting Catholic doctrine and teaching of any tool the pope has at his disposal. All Catholics are called to take these things seriously, and many encyclicals, including this one, also appeal to broader audiences. Since this one focuses on the sacred heart of Jesus, it’s likely to be of interest to Christians more than non-Christians, but it’s still worth checking out, because, amidst a lot of discussion of a popular Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which might be off-putting to non-Catholics (and some Catholics), Francis makes some powerful points about the current human condition and the remedy for what ails us. 

We gotta have heart, to paraphrase the pope and steal a line from the Broadway show Damn Yankees. Let me pull some of the more beautiful and challenging sections from Dilexit nos for those of you who aren’t likely to read it yourself. In the interest of keeping this manageable, I’m going to limit myself to two or three quotes per point; my initial pull of great quotes runs 15 pages, so it really is worth reading the whole thing. Nevertheless, the themes I’ll highlight from Dilexit nos are:

1. The superficial, consumerist nature of the postmodern human condition
2. Individualism’s unhealthy side
3. Technology and dehumanization
4. The heart > the head
5. Love is the antidote
6. The heart as a precondition for social justice
7. Love’s dependency on God
8. The Church needs to find its heart, too
9. We are all missionaries

1. Francis on superficial, consumerist, postmodernity:

• The symbol of the heart has often been used to express the love of Jesus Christ. Some have questioned whether this symbol is still meaningful today. Yet living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart. (paragraph 2)
• Instead of running after superficial satisfactions and playing a role for the benefit of others, we would do better to think about the really important questions in life. Who am I, really? What am I looking for? What direction do I want to give to my life, my decisions and my actions? Why and for what purpose am I in this world? How do I want to look back on my life once it ends? What meaning do I want to give to all my experiences? Who do I want to be for others? Who am I for God? All these questions lead us back to the heart. (8)
• [W]e find ourselves immersed in societies of serial consumers who live from day to day, dominated by the hectic pace and bombarded by technology, lacking in the patience needed to engage in the processes that an interior life by its very nature requires. In contemporary society, people “risk losing their centre, the centre of their very selves”.** “Indeed, the men and women of our time often find themselves confused and torn apart, almost bereft of an inner principle that can create unity and harmony in their lives and actions. Models of behaviour that, sadly, are now widespread exaggerate our rational-technological dimension or, on the contrary, that of our instincts”. No room is left for the heart. (9)

Does any of this sound familiar?

2. The unhealthy side of individualism

• [T]he deepest part of us is also that which is least known. Even encountering others does not necessarily prove to be a way of encountering ourselves, inasmuch as our thought patterns are dominated by an unhealthy individualism. Many people feel safer constructing their systems of thought in the more readily controllable domain of intelligence and will. The failure to make room for the heart, as distinct from our human powers and passions viewed in isolation from one another, has resulted in a stunting of the idea of a personal centre, in which love, in the end, is the one reality that can unify all the others. (10)
• …A society dominated by narcissism and self-centredness will increasingly become “heartless”. This will lead in turn to the “loss of desire”, since as other persons disappear from the horizon we find ourselves trapped within walls of our own making, no longer capable of healthy relationships. As a result, we also become incapable of openness to God. As Heidegger puts it, to be open to the divine we need to build a “guest house”. (17)

3. The role of technology in dehumanization

• In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity. No algorithm will ever be able to capture, for example, the nostalgia that all of us feel, whatever our age, and wherever we live, when we recall how we first used a fork to seal the edges of the pies that we helped our mothers or grandmothers to make at home. It was a moment of culinary apprenticeship, somewhere between child-play and adulthood, when we first felt responsible for working and helping one another. Along with the fork, I could also mention thousands of other little things that are a precious part of everyone’s life: a smile we elicited by telling a joke, a picture we sketched in the light of a window, the first game of soccer we played with a rag ball, the worms we collected in a shoebox, a flower we pressed in the pages of a book, our concern for a fledgling bird fallen from its nest, a wish we made in plucking a daisy. All these little things, ordinary in themselves yet extraordinary for us, can never be captured by algorithms. The fork, the joke, the window, the ball, the shoebox, the book, the bird, the flower: all of these live on as precious memories “kept” deep in our heart. (20)

(This is my favorite riff in the whole thing.) These three overlapping themes capture the problem Pope Francis is addressing in this document.

4. The heart > the head

I mentioned that there is a popular Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is one of many elements of what’s called “popular piety” that protestants and evangelicals may think of as uneducated superstition. (As a former Protestant, I understand the sentiment.) In defending this devotion, Francis makes an interesting, broader point about the degree to which many (especially Westerners) elevate philosophy and reason over the movements of the heart.

• I ask, then, that no one make light of the fervent devotion of the holy faithful people of God, which in its popular piety seeks to console Christ. I also encourage everyone to consider whether there might be greater reasonableness, truth and wisdom in certain demonstrations of love that seek to console the Lord than in the cold, distant, calculated and nominal acts of love that are at times practised by those who claim to possess a more reflective, sophisticated and mature faith. (160)

5. Love as the antidote

• In a word, if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved. (21)
• Yet we cannot attain our fulfillment as human beings unless we open our hearts to others; only through love do we become fully ourselves. The deepest part of us, created for love, will fulfill God’s plan only if we learn to love. And the heart is the symbol of that love. (59)

6. The heart as a precondition of social justice

Maybe it’s because my graduate work was on social encyclicals, but this theme – the inextricable connection between true social justice and love – was the one I found to be the richest in Dilexit nos. It was hard to pick just three quotes.

• We need to remember that in the Roman Empire many of the poor, foreigners and others who lived on the fringes of society met with respect, affection and care from Christians. This explains why the apostate emperor Julian, in one of his letters, acknowledged that one reason why Christians were respected and imitated was the assistance they gave the poor and strangers, who were ordinarily ignored and treated with contempt. For Julian, it was intolerable that the Christians whom he despised, “in addition to feeding their own, also feed our poor and needy, who receive no help from us”. The emperor thus insisted on the need to create charitable institutions to compete with those of the Christians and thus gain the respect of society: “There should be instituted in each city many accommodations so that the immigrants may enjoy our philanthropy… and make the Greeks accustomed to such works of generosity”. Julian did not achieve his objective, no doubt because underlying those works there was nothing comparable to the Christian charity that respected the unique dignity of each person. (169)
• By associating with the lowest ranks of society (cf. Mt 25:31-46), “Jesus brought the great novelty of recognizing the dignity of every person, especially those who were considered ‘unworthy’. This new principle in human history – which emphasizes that individuals are even more ‘worthy’ of our respect and love when they are weak, scorned, or suffering, even to the point of losing the human ‘figure’ – has changed the face of the world. It has given life to institutions that take care of those who find themselves in disadvantaged conditions, such as abandoned infants, orphans, the elderly who are left without assistance, the mentally ill, people with incurable diseases or severe deformities, and those living on the streets”. (170)
• In contemplating the pierced heart of the Lord, who “took our infirmities and bore our diseases” ( Mt 8:17), we too are inspired to be more attentive to the sufferings and needs of others, and confirmed in our efforts to share in his work of liberation as instruments for the spread of his love. [169] As we meditate on Christ’s self-offering for the sake of all, we are naturally led to ask why we too should not be ready to give our lives for others: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and that we ought to lay down our lives for one another” ( 1 Jn 3:16). (171)

7. Love’s dependency on God

I can’t do this theme justice, because Francis makes a beautiful and detailed argument from Scripture, citing many examples from the Gospels of Jesus acting first in relationships and leading with love. And, look, you may be someone who sees this part and is tempted to skip it, because you manage to love without relying on God. I get that. But Francis’ point is that, for all of us, the ability to love well comes in response to someone first loving us well. I suspect even the atheists among us might grant that point. Francis is just more intentional and pointed in naming who that first Lover is than some. In lieu of a much longer argument, consider these quotes:

• At first glance, all this may smack of pious sentimentalism. Yet it is supremely serious and of decisive importance, and finds its most sublime expression in Christ crucified. The cross is Jesus’ most eloquent word of love. A word that is not shallow, sentimental or merely edifying. It is love, sheer love. That is why Saint Paul, struggling to find the right words to describe his relationship with Christ, could speak of “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). This was Paul’s deepest conviction: the knowledge that he was loved. Christ’s self-offering on the cross became the driving force in Paul’s life, yet it only made sense to him because he knew that something even greater lay behind it: the fact that “he loved me”. At a time when many were seeking salvation, prosperity or security elsewhere, Paul, moved by the Spirit, was able to see farther and to marvel at the greatest and most essential thing of all: “Christ loved me”. (46)
• In what we have said, it is important to note several inseparable aspects. Acts of love of neighbour, with the renunciation, self-denial, suffering and effort that they entail, can only be such when they are nourished by Christ’s own love. He enables us to love as he loved, and in this way he loves and serves others through us. He humbles himself to show his love through our actions, yet even in our slightest works of mercy, his heart is glorified and displays all its grandeur. Once our hearts welcome the love of Christ in complete trust, and enable its fire to spread in our lives, we become capable of loving others as Christ did, in humility and closeness to all. In this way, Christ satisfies his thirst and gloriously spreads the flames of his ardent and gracious love in us and through us. How can we fail to see the magnificent harmony present in all this? (203)

8. The Church needs to find its heart, too

If there is a rationale in the document to explain the timing of its release, this is it: Francis wanted the members of the synod to remember that institutional structures aren’t the point of the faith; love is.***

• I would add that the heart of Christ also frees us from another kind of dualism found in communities and pastors excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganization plans, worldly projects, secular ways of thinking and mandatory programmes. The result is often a Christianity stripped of the tender consolations of faith, the joy of serving others, the fervour of personal commitment to mission, the beauty of knowing Christ and the profound gratitude born of the friendship he offers and the ultimate meaning he gives to our lives. This too is the expression of an illusory and disembodied otherworldliness. (88)
• The Church also needs that love, lest the love of Christ be replaced with outdated structures and concerns, excessive attachment to our own ideas and opinions, and fanaticism in any number of forms, which end up taking the place of the gratuitous love of God that liberates, enlivens, brings joy to the heart and builds communities. The wounded side of Christ continues to pour forth that stream which is never exhausted, never passes away, but offers itself time and time again to all those who wish to love as he did. For his love alone can bring about a new humanity. (219)
• The Christian message is attractive when experienced and expressed in its totality: not simply as a refuge for pious thoughts or an occasion for impressive ceremonies. What kind of worship would we give to Christ if we were to rest content with an individual relationship with him and show no interest in relieving the sufferings of others or helping them to live a better life? Would it please the heart that so loved us, if we were to bask in a private religious experience while ignoring its implications for the society in which we live? Let us be honest and accept the word of God in its fullness. On the other hand, our work as Christians for the betterment of society should not obscure its religious inspiration, for that, in the end, would be to seek less for our brothers and sisters than what God desires to give them. For this reason, we should conclude this chapter by recalling the missionary dimension of our love for the heart of Christ. (205)

9. We are all missionaries

• Jesus is calling you and sending you forth to spread goodness in our world. His call is one of service, a summons to do good, perhaps as a physician, a mother, a teacher or a priest. Wherever you may be, you can hear his call and realize that he is sending you forth to carry out that mission. He himself told us, “I am sending you out” (Lk 10:3). It is part of our being friends with him. For this friendship to mature, however, it is up to you to let him send you forth on a mission in this world, and to carry it out confidently, generously, freely and fearlessly. If you stay trapped in your own comfort zone, you will never really find security; doubts and fears, sorrow and anxiety will always loom on the horizon. Those who do not carry out their mission on this earth will find not happiness, but disappointment. Never forget that Jesus is at your side at every step of the way. He will not cast you into the abyss, or leave you to your own devices. He will always be there to encourage and accompany you. He has promised, and he will do it: “For I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). (215)
• In your own way, you too must be a missionary, like the apostles and the first disciples of Jesus, who went forth to proclaim the love of God, to tell others that Christ is alive and worth knowing. Saint Therese experienced this as an essential part of her oblation to merciful Love: “I wanted to give my Beloved to drink and I felt myself consumed with a thirst for souls”. That is your mission as well. Each of us must carry it out in his or her own way; you will come to see how you can be a missionary. Jesus deserves no less. If you accept the challenge, he will enlighten you, accompany you and strengthen you, and you will have an enriching experience that will bring you much happiness. It is not important whether you see immediate results; leave that to the Lord who works in the secret of our hearts. Keep experiencing the joy born of our efforts to share the love of Christ with others. (216)

What’s the takeaway here, especially for those who aren’t Catholic nerds (like me)? First of all, maybe it’s worth reflecting on whether the pope is right in his assessment of life today. Do you find yourself frantically running from one thing to another, or conversely endlessly scrolling on your phone, rather than engaging in the bigger questions about the meaning of life and acting on your answers to those questions?

Secondly, look at the world around us. In how many arenas do we lack love? Even beyond the actual wars that rage in hotspots around the world, is our economy motivated by compassion? Is our politics motivated by mutual appreciation of human dignity? Does our culture (or our feed) offer us examples of self-sacrifice or self-centeredness?

Those are the arenas that Pope Francis sees a lack of heart. By writing about the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which some might find old-fashioned or quirky, he’s seeking to remind us that it’s not truth or beauty or wealth or power that’s at the center of our human story. If we need one thing, collectively or individually, it’s not those things. We gotta have heart.

*Encyclicals (and most documents created by the Vatican) are titled by the first two words of the official Latin-language document. In case you were wondering.

**The English translation on the Vatican website tends toward the British spelling instead of the American. I don’t know if it’s to troll the Anglicans or what, but I’m keeping it, spellcheck be darned.

***(I’m not going to spend time on the mystery of why he released it when he did, during the final week of a three-year process to help the Catholic Church reorient itself to be focused on listening to people. This “Synod on Synodality” has been a major initiative of Francis’, so it seems a little odd for him to release the fourth# encyclical of his pontificate during what was essentially the ninth inning of the synod. Maybe he’ll address that in a future press availability; until then, everything is speculation, because there’s nothing self-evident in the text of the encyclical itself.)

#Technically Pope Francis has authored four encyclicals now, though one, Lumen fidei, was primarily the creation of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. Francis was basically the closer on that one, to keep with the baseball analogy.